Import and Edit GoPro HD MP4 files in Final Cut Express (FCE)

“Hi Guys, I am just curious to know what you guys use to edit the footage from a Go Pro HD on a Mac? I have Final Cut Express, but it won’t read them, and iMovie turns them into rubbish!”

“I have all this go pro footage and it wont let me import it into final cut express. Any help? Thanks”

“I have FCE4 and I can’t seem to import any footage from my GoPro HD. I’ve tried directly from the camera using USB, SD Card & Exporting Final Cut XML. The footage is shoot in 60fps. I’m obviously missing something.”

GoPro HD series (GoProHD, GoPro2, GoPro3, GoPro3+,GoPro4) camera has been one of the best activity image capture cameras, and it is hot around the world. The reason why so many people like it is that GoPro HD Hero makes it easy for people to shoot activity videos and pictures in high quality with H.264 MP4.

Though MP4 generated from GoPro is well compatible with some of Mac software like QuickTime player, iTunes, etc. However, when it comes to importing the GoPro HD videos to Final Cut Express for editing, it is a painful experience to some GoPro HD camera owners.

Why Final Cut Express can’t handle GoPro footage?

As we all know, the GoPro HD cameras records videos in .mp4 file type. The file type is a compressed output format and not an ideal editing format. Meanwhile the .mp4 file type is not supported by Apple’s Final Cut software including FCE, FCP and iMovie’11. Therefore, directly editing GoPro videos in Final Cut Express is just a blue moon.

What if We Import GoPro HD MP4 files to Final Cut Express?

To ingest GoPro MP4 files to FCE, the easy workaround is to convert your files to a more editing friendly format for FCE. To get work done, you must use 3rd party software such as UFUWare HD Video Converter for Mac, which is an ideal tool for you to trim clips download and export the clips you’ll want to use in your edit. With it, you can effortlessly transcode GoPro MP4 to Apple InterMediate Codec(*.mov), which will do fine for keeping the GoPro quality the same and creating a Final Cut Express friendly file format. Just Get it and follow the tutorial below to transfer your GoPro HD footage to Final Cut Express for smooth editing.

Tip: If you wanna combine GoPro MP4 files into one file, you can select all GoPro MP4 files and click the “Merge” box.

Step 2: Hit the “Format” bar and select iMovie and Final Cut Express > Apple InterMediate Codec(*.mov) as output format for FCE on the drop-down menu.

Step 3: Adjust the video and audio parameters, including the Bitrate of Video & Audio, Video Size, Sample Rate, Frame Rate, Audio Channels, etc., by clicking the Settings button on the main interface for getting the best quality.

Once the process completed, click “Open” button to find the generated videos, and then you can transfer the converted GoPro MP4 files to Final Cut Express easily and quickly. (With AIC MOV output format, you can also import converted GoPro HD MP4 to imovie for editing.)